The Four Corners of Nowhere

Running time: 110 mins

A young nomadic stranger named Duncan, thumbing his way across America, finds himself in the midst of college-town Ann Arbor, Michigan, searching for the truth--about himself and his generation. But during his stay among the many dreamy, frustrated, and cynical souls he encounters, he comes to understand that his search is doomed to fail. Truth, he discovers, is like everything else--elusive, ever-changing, and always subject to interpretation. Four Corners focuses its attention on the latest incarnation of the endless string of lost generations--the so-called Generation X--and the various mechanisms its members use to make some sense out of life or, at the very least, to cope. But unlike some other explorations--most of them shrill or just plain angry--of this disenchanted group, Chbosky's film employs a good sense of parody and fun that lets the collective air out of all those earnest analytical balloons that attempt to explain ". . . just what's wrong with young people these days." A collection of eccentric stereotypes--the blocked painter, the stifling aspiring yuppie couple, the insecure folk singer, the bitterly sarcastic disk jockey--expose the bogus absurdities behind the pop psychology that seeks to characterize an entire generation as "this" or "that." The only underlying truth, if it exists, seems to be the basic need to love and be loved. Through Duncan, in ways both humorous and often times touching, Chbosky shows us that generations, including Generation X, are made up, not of cookie-cutter clusters, but of millions of unique and complex individuals, each one trying in his or her own way to make sense of the chaos that surrounds us all. --P.D. Crane